


Another Fine Mess

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-30
Updated: 2006-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 22:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lake monster, 1. Winchesters, 0. Sam and Dean communicate, sort of, because what else is there to do when you're trapped together on a rock?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Fine Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Timeframe: Set between "Phantom Traveler" and "Bloody Mary"  
> Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine. They belong to Eric Kripke and the CW.  
> A/N: Plot shamelessly ripped off from an episode of The X-Files. Not a crossover. Huge thankyous to my awesome, knowledgeable, and sharp-eyed beta readers lalejandra and sargraf, who rescued this from rampant comma abuse, among other things.

The hull of the boat was only a lumpy shape in the darkness, and sinking fast, which, you know, tended to happen to boats when they got rammed by a thirty-foot something-or-other. Dean couldn't even see the ripples as it went, didn't care. The weight of his jeans and shoes dragging, Dean shoved on through the water that felt cold as ice and grabbed Sam by the back of his sweater and pulled him up onto the rock with him.

Coughing, Sam fell to his hands and knees.

"You okay?" When Dean sat, there was a squishing sound. He was soaked through, his jeans clinging heavily to his legs.

"Yeah."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah." Sam sat down too, huddling into his woolen fisherman's sweater and windbreaker.

"Holy freakin' shit on a dancing popsicle stick."

"With a side of fries." Sam gathered up a handful of sweater and wrung water out onto the rock.

It was a pretty big rock, as far as rocks go, not that Dean was an expert on rocks, or anything like that. Really it was more like an island. There was even a small patch of dirt, bushes, and a spindly tree at one end.

Then he decided he was kidding himself. It was a rock, a rock in the middle of a whole lot of water. Dean never had any problems with water. Dad taught him to swim when he was three, by putting him in the public pool, standing waist-deep in water with his hands out, poised to grab Dean if he started to sink--but Dean didn't. Instead he started to kick and move his arms. Not that he remembered that--Dad had told him about it while in a talkative mood years ago.

John taught Sam to swim, too, but Dean taught Sam how to swim the length of a pool without coming up for air once. Being able to hold your breath for a long time was important, especially if you were going to be hunting things like water demons, lake monsters, and aquatic ghosts.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?" Now Sam had taken off his shoes and was wringing out his socks.

"The next time I think it would be a good idea to go after a lake monster, remind me not to do it. In fact, if I try to, just punch me real hard. Knock me out."

"Sure."

Water lapped innocently against the rock.

Dean got to his feet and dug out his pocket flashlight. The tiny beam looked pathetic and all it found was water and more water. "Sonuvabitch!" Dean shouted, his voice echoing weirdly off the surface of the lake.

"That thing...was it..."

"What else could it have been? Dude. Should've brought a camera. We could make a bundle at the tourist traps selling snapshots." Dean closed his eyes. He could almost feel the wad of bills in his hand-- _that's right folks, first new photographic evidence since 1975..._

"No, too dark. You'd need a flash, and even then, unless you had the right kind of lens you wouldn't be able to capture the sheer size of..."

"Killjoy."

Sam drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around his wet-jeans-covered legs. He looked about twelve. "Someone will come along. You got off the mayday."

"Did you see the size of the sheriff's department?"

"Uh..."

"I think that _dog_ was the deputy. No one's coming to get us. Maybe in the morning, a fisherman will come by."

"You mean we're stuck here all night?" Sam's jaw dropped.

"Looks like."

"Well, this sucks." Sam flung a slimy twig angrily into the darkness.

"Give the boy a gold star. That's a brilliant observation, Sam. Real insightful. You learn how to do that at Stanford?"

"Were you always this sarcastic?"

"Were you always this annoying?"

"Look, this isn't getting us anywhere," Sam said, a bit desperate, as if gripped by a sudden seizure of adult behavior. "We need to think through all our options." Sam dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cell. He hit a button, but the display didn't light up. Sam frowned and hit another button. "Nothing, it's probably too wet. What about yours?"

Dean tried. "Nope. Piece of crap." So much for high technology. Dean drew back his arm to hurl it into the lake but Sam stopped him.

"Dean, no!"

He lowered his arm. "Yeah."

For all that their list of contacts was also in a file on the laptop, or in Dad's journal, it wouldn't be fun to have to reenter all those numbers. Also, there were some contacts stored on Dean's phone that were most definitely not archived on the laptop or the journal. He'd hate to lose Bridget's number. Or Stephanie's. Or Petra's. Or...

"We could try swimming."

"Sam, the lake's four miles across at its widest point."

"We may not be at the widest point."

"I have a rough idea where we are. At least, I know I saw the lights of the lodge a few minutes before we got hit. Besides..." Dean crouched, staring at the water. "You eager to get eaten by Nessie?"

"No," came the resentful response. There was a pause. "So what do we do?"

"For now, sit tight. Don't worry." Dean made himself grin. "Something will come to me." He ignored how numb his own fingers felt, how he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, and settled from a crouch onto what seemed like the least sharp, bumpy patch of rock he could find in the puny flashlight beam. He switched the light off to save the battery.

They sat listening to the water lap against their rock--no, _island_. At least it wasn't going to rain any time soon, only a few thin clouds drifting across the stars. He clenched and unclenched his fingers.

"Think of anything yet?" Sam said.

Dean turned a glare on him, but he doubted his brother could see it in the dark. "No, Sam, I haven't thought of anything yet. When I do think of something, you can count on it, you'll be the second person to know. And you can stop laughing now."

"Who, me?"

Some things never changed.

* * *

  
Sam hadn't really needed help getting out of the water, but plunging into a cold lake in early November in the middle of the night wasn't exactly something he was accustomed to. Secretly, he was glad for the hand that had tugged on the back of his sweater to lift him from the water.

He wondered what Dean was thinking about as he stared out across the lake, flashlight dangling from his fingers, an arm propped over one knee as casually as if they were sitting in a hotel room watching TV.

There was a blip on the water, a bubble or a wave.

Instantly Dean rose to his feet in a smooth motion, pulling out the handgun he seemed perpetually to have somewhere on him. It was as if the pockets of Dean's blue jeans were n-dimensional, holding an infinite number of monster-killing implements.

Of course, the gun was now wet, along with the cartridge inside.

"Uh, Dean..."

"Shh."

Nothing else stirred on the water.

"Dean, you can't fire it anyway. It's wet."

"I know that." He tucked the gun away out of sight.

Sam huddled deeper into his windbreaker, which was waterproof but didn't seem to provide much warmth. Although they were in the south, it was still pretty cold, Sam guessed maybe forty degrees. The water probably hadn't been much warmer. He felt his body trying to shudder with cold, but held it in. Dean was probably cold too; Sam had seen the way he kept working his hands to try to get the stiffness out of them.

It was almost uncanny, the way Dean chose that particular moment to turn the flashlight back on, swinging around to aim it in Sam's face. In the pale light, Sam saw his own breath rising.

"You cold?" Dean said sharply.

"A little."

"Then zip up your windbreaker."

This felt familiar. How many times had Dean told Sam to zip up his jacket, change wet socks for dry ones, put on an extra flannel shirt for a night hunt? That went on until Sam was maybe thirteen. It used to annoy him so much.

Funny, the things you wound up missing.

Why Sam hadn't thought to zip up the windbreaker himself, well, he'd accepted a few years back that while he was a responsible adult in many areas, some details came to him more easily than others. Like the way Jess would tell him to go to bed the night before a test, otherwise he'd just study until dawn. Then he'd fall asleep during the test.

 _Jess._ No. He wasn't going to think about her.

Dean sat down again, the flashlight still on, bringing back vague memories of Dean insisting on a nightlight, claiming it was for Sam, but even at the time Sam had worked out it wasn't actually for him. As usual, Dean refused to wear any of the sensible backwoods gear one might want on a boating trip, like a windbreaker or fleece pullover. He was in his brown jacket over a black t-shirt. He was probably even colder than Sam, who had been smart enough to wear wool.

"Better?" Dean asked.

"Yeah." Sam put his shoes back on, minus the soggy socks. He wondered if Dean would accept if Sam offered him the windbreaker or the sweater.

His big brother squinted at him across the flashlight beam. "Are your teeth chattering?"

"Uh-huh."

The sigh that exhaled Dean's body held a tone Sam usually only heard from mothers with difficult children. Dean held out his arm.

Sam just stared at it, so Dean rotated his wrist, twitching his fingers. Once, twice.

When Sam still didn't move, Dean snorted. "Oh for chrissakes, Sam, I used to change your diapers. Get over here."

So Sam scooted over. They hooked their arms across each other's shoulders. That too was familiar; they'd sat like that once, when Dean was thirteen and Sam was nine, on a dock in Minnesota. It was dusk and they were watching for Dad to come home from a ghost-hunting trip across the lake.

It helped ease the chill in Sam, but he knew Dean needed the contact as much as he did. Sitting this close to his brother confirmed that Dean's body temperature was too low.

After about five minutes Dean got fidgety. He stood up, turning to look at the patch of brush and the single lone tree at the other end of their tiny island.

"I'm an idiot," said Dean.

Sam refrained from saying anything snide just then.

"My lighter is waterproof." In three strides, Dean crossed the island.

"It is?" Sam stood up.

There was the sound of snapping twigs, while Dean's shadow worked among the scrub. Then Dean returned. He knelt to place the twigs and branches he'd gathered into a neat pile that would do a boy scout proud, then took out the lighter. It took a few tries before the fire finally listened to his call.

As the tiny flame wavered, bowed, then crawled along the first twig, Sam thought about how much he associated his brother with fire, how Dean had pulled him from it back in Stanford.

"See?" said Dean. "Told you I'd figure something out."

* * *

"Wisconsin."

"Four times. No, wait." Dean wriggled his fingers, testing to make sure the feeling was in fact returning to them, not that he'd been worried or anything. He'd been cold before, he'd be cold again, no biggie. "Five."

"New Jersey."

"Three."

The flames of the fire gave off about as much heat as a tiny area heater, but at least Sam wasn't shivering anymore, and so Dean figured he was doing his job okay, both here on the lake and on the road. So far, Sam was alive and well and wasn't bruised or bleeding.

Dean intended to keep it that way.

"Missouri?" Sam leaned back on his palms, his knees bent, with the fire deepening the shadows that always seemed to circle his eyes lately. There hadn't been shadows like that before. After one of the times when John had driven off alone to go check up on Sam, Dean asked him when he came back, _How is he_ , and John had said quietly, _Good. He looks good,_ as if this hurt somehow.

"Twelve."

"Twelve? Dean, you've been to the state of Missouri twelve times?" Sam poked at the fire with a stick, sending up a shower of sparks. "Why?"

"Duh, because of the town of Rolla. Damn place kept sucking me back in. Thank god Dad was with me that last time, or I'd never have made it to St. Louis."

"Wait." Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose. "What does St. Louis have to do with it?"

"You need to spend more time brushing up on urban legends." He looked at his watch. Midnight. Not a single boat had gone by and not a single light was visible on the shoreline except for the big lodge, and even as Dean watched, they winked out too. It was like they were the only two human beings on the whole lake. Just him and his brother with a thirty-foot monster lurking somewhere beneath the dark, smooth water.

"Should we try the cell phones again?"

"Worth a shot." Dean took his out while Sam tried his. Nothing. "Water probably fried all the circuits."

"Someone will see the fire, though."

"Maybe." Dean lay back on the rock and folded his arms behind his head, tracking the constellations, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Gemini, Orion--he knew which ones to look for in this part of the country, this time of year, how they criss-crossed the night sky almost as well as he knew how the Interstates criss-crossed the country. It was comforting to see them up there. It confirmed to him where he was.

"How do you do that?" Sam shifted, straightened his legs for a moment before bending his knees again, as if stretching out would leave him vulnerable to something.

"Do what?"

"Relax like that, when we're in this mess."

With his shoulders rubbing against the rock, Dean shrugged. "No point in getting worked up about it until I can actually _do_ something, Sam. Nothing to do right now but wait and hope we don't have to sit here all night. Now, if Champ's cousin comes back, you give me a nudge."

Dean thought maybe it was four years of cushy college life, with nothing more harrowing than a few campus break-ins as a threat, that made Sam forget what it was like to be always hunting. You either learned to relax when you could, or you lost your mind. He didn't always succeed. There were times when Dean felt coiled for days on end, when the sound of the wind moving a crumpled soda can on asphalt made him spin, reaching for a gun. But most of the time, he kept it together, because it was either that or wind up dead.

Maybe he should tell Sam.

Or maybe not.

* * *

Sam dropped another handful twigs on the fire. They'd kept it going for two hours now. The patch of scrub on the tiny island wasn't much of a patch to begin with, however. They would run out of fuel soon, unless they figured out a way to uproot the bushes or chop down the straggly tree.

"When did that ever happen?" Dean said.

"Iowa. When Dad got rid of the ghost at the armory, and then when we went back a few years later to deal with the opera house."

"Oh, yeah." Dean smiled. "I liked that school."

"Well, that school liked you. You were there for all of what, three months the first time when you were a freshman? When we went back four years later and _I_ started as a freshman, what's the first thing I heard out of people's mouths? 'Winchester? Seriously? Are you Dean Winchester's little brother?' Everywhere I went. Even the Latin Club. Dean Winchester this, Dean Winchester that, oh my god is he really your big brother? Three months, Dean, and they were practically ready to inscribe your name over the door. Actually, this one girl told me your name was all over the girl's bathroom walls."

"No kidding?" Dean grinned in a particularly infuriating way. Then he frowned. "It wasn't anything bad was it?" he said, actually sounding anxious.

"Stuff like 'Cindi'--with an 'i'--'loves Dean.' Also 'Dean+Cindi.'" Sam chuckled.

"Ah yes, Cindi." Dean's grin returned, wider than before.

"So whether we lived in the same town our whole lives or not, it happened. More than once." Sam tucked his fingers inside the sleeves of the windbreaker. "Plus there was Dad."

"What about Dad?"

"'Why can't you be more like Dean.' 'Hold the crossbow the way Dean just did it.' 'You practice and maybe someday you'll be as good as your brother.'"

He hadn't meant that to come out as bitter as it did.

"Can I help it if I'm just naturally gifted? C'mon Sammy." Dean waved his arm. "You know Dad bragged about you all the time."

"Not when I was in earshot, though."

"Okay, granted, but he did. You think I didn't get an earful about you when I brought home three C's and a D?"

"So how come you got bad grades?" Sam poked at the fire again.

"Because I was good at Latin and learning about medieval warfare techniques but calculus made me want to stab my eyes out with a spork."

"Oh." Sam turned on his side and stretched out his legs. As long as they were there, he might as well try to follow Dean's example.

* * *

It was three o'clock in the morning by the luminous face of Dean's watch when he heard Sam whimper.

Sam had gone to sleep in a way he hadn't been able to lately even in the most comfortable of hotel beds. Maybe being out of the usual setting helped, but, whatever, Dean was just grateful to see him actually get some shut-eye because since they'd left Stanford Sam hadn't slept more than an hour or two at a stretch. Plus, there were the nightmares. Dean would have to say something about that soon.

He propped himself up on one elbow, looking across the dead fire to watch his brother. Sam's hand, out flung to one side, twitched into a fist and he whimpered again.

Screw it. Maybe it wasn't smart to wake someone abruptly from a nightmare, but he wasn't going to sit by and just watch this.

"Yo, Sam," Dean whispered, and reached out to poke him hard on the shoulder.

Sam sat up immediately, eyes wide and alarmed, breathing hard. "Dean?"

"I'm here."

Rubbing his hands over his face, Sam shuddered. "I...uh..."

Dean stared down at the embers of the fire. Should really say something about it to him, talk about it. "Just a few hours to sunrise."

Sam didn't answer, just tucked his knees up again, looking out across the water. His breathing slowed so that Dean couldn't hear it anymore.

* * *

"You really think I look like him?"

"More just the shape of your face and shoulders, your build, than feature for feature. But yeah. You do."

At this, Dean gave a little half-smile. You would think no one had ever pointed out to him before how much he resembled John. But maybe nobody ever had; Sam couldn't remember.

"Well, you look like Mom," Dean said. He stood up, brushed the sand off his jeans, and moved down closer to the water.

"I know." Sam used to sit and just stare at the one photograph he had of her.

Sam stayed where he was, lying on his side. He hadn't gotten back to sleep. About an hour ago Dean had started talking, about nothing in particular, about chicks, about comic book heroes, about peanut M&M's. Maybe it was Dean trying to hold back the nightmares, or maybe he was trying to hold back the silences between them.

The sky was pre-dawn. It was still dark, yet not-dark. Sam could make out details and see the trees on the shore as more than just a blur.

One of those silences slipped in and stayed. There wasn't anything Dean, or he, could do to stop it.

* * *

Just before sunrise, they heard the creak of oars and voices quietly talking.

About time.

"Hey!" Dean shouted.

The voices stopped.

"Hello?" One of the men called out.

A big flashlight beam caught Dean in the face. He stumbled back, shading his eyes while Sam scrambled to his feet and moved up beside him.

Two fishermen stared at them from a rowboat, their poles sticking up like antennae from the hull.

"What the heck are you two doing out there?"

"Me and my brother, we were out for some night fishing and had some trouble with our boat," Dean lied fluently.

"Where is it?" The other guy asked.

"Sank," said Dean.

"That's some trouble," said the first guy

"Don't I know it." He put as much heartiness into his voice as he could muster.

The fishermen offered them a ride back to shore. As the rowboat pulled away from the forlorn rock that had sheltered them for a night, Dean felt almost...

Well, almost sad.

Like he'd miss it. Like where ever they went now, he'd sometimes think about that little island in the middle of that lake, knowing it was there. When they were kids, he and Sam used to pretend to be shipwrecked.

Sometimes he thought about living on an island, accessible only by private boat, and sure, he'd have parties sometimes and go into town sometimes but mostly people would leave him alone.

Sam sat in the stern, hands gripping the gunwales, with his back to Dean.

"Hey, Sam?"

His brother turned around, face into the rising sun. He squinted. "Yeah?"

Dean thought about the days when he'd looked for Dad by himself, when he'd realized Dad's absence was indefinite, before Dean finally got his own ass to Stanford. He thought what it was like to hunt solo, what this night would have been like if he was on an island alone.

"Uh, nothing."

* * *

Sam turned back to face the approaching shoreline. The sunlight glinted on the water. Bob and Earl, the two fishermen who'd rescued them, seemed like nice guys, keeping up a steady stream of idle conversation; Sam guessed they weren't very good fishermen.

He was glad to see the dock that seemed to rise up to meet them, to feel the satisfying thud as the boat bumped against the wood. Sam got out first, taking the line and mooring the rowboat, his fingers automatically forming a bowline knot.

Dean got out next. Bob and Earl offered them a ride, but they declined.

It made Sam feel bad, not going back to the charter place to explain, to offer them something. After all, they'd lost an entire boat. That was sure to hurt them financially.

"It's not like we wrecked the boat, Sam," Dean said, as they hiked along the road to the where they'd left the car. "The lake monster did it."

"I know, but still. How much gear did we lose?"

"Two shotguns," Dean reeled off quickly. "Two boxes of ammo, two tranquilizer guns. A knife. The net and the harpoon I rented with the boat."

The sting of the losses was audible in Dean's voice.

"We'll get new ones," Sam offered.

"Shotguns and tranq guns ain't cheap, Sam."

"I know."

It couldn't have been easy for Dean, knowing they had to mark this job down as a loss.

"Hey, Dean?"

"Hm?"

Sam thought of the hand that pulled him from the water, the hand that flicked the lighter, the hand that woke him from his nightmare.

"They really did like you at that school, you know. And it helped me a lot. Because I was Dean Winchester's kid brother, no one picked on me. I even got invited to the good parties."

"Glad my amazing charisma could be of help, Sam."

He fought the impulse to force the issue, to come right out and say _thanks for looking after me_. At times Dean's irreverence felt like the verbal equivalent of a door shutting firmly; not slamming, just inarguably closed for business. But doing it his way, saying it outright, would just embarrass them both now. He'd missed his chance.

The Impala was up ahead, nestled under the trees, waiting for them.

* * *

Dean adjusted the rear-view mirror just so before turning on the ignition. He couldn't wait to get to a hotel and wash the lake crud from his hair and off his body.

In the passenger seat, Sam sat quiet.

The wind blew in through the open window as the car rushed along the empty country road.

Dean half-smiled, but he didn't say _you're welcome_.

 

~end~


End file.
